FTA Movie Review

"F.T.A." is a slang Vietnam-era expression used by disgruntled American soldiers, meaning "F*** The Army!" Anti-war activists used it as the title for their pseudo-USO style show that toured the Pacific Rim in the early 1970s, featuring stars such as Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, that was attended and cheered by tens of thousands of GIs, despite the (obvious) fact that the military was officially hostile to it.

Yes, you read that right. Many, many U.S. soldiers of the Vietnam era cheered Jane Fonda and the "Hollywood Left" for their entertaining ridicule and denunciation of the American war in Southeast Asia.

That part of American history has been sent down the "memory hole," replaced by the lie that anti-war activists and American GIs were always bitter enemies of each other, as conveyed by the urban legend that returning American soldiers were routinely spat upon by ungrateful hippies and pinkos.

And that deceit started early. This very movie--a documentary from 1972 about the "F.T.A." show tour--was pulled by the studio within a week of its release and disappeared for decades, as the message it conveyed about sympathy for the anti-war movement from within the military was one that those in power wanted to make sure was heard by as few people as possible.

The clips from the shows, and the other material in the movie, indicate that Fonda and Sutherland and the others consistently pushed a wide-ranging leftist message, by no means limited to opposition to the Vietnam War. When they visit places like Okinawa and the Philippines, they speak out against the American imperialism and capitalism that are oppressing the people in those places. There is plenty of anti-racism material, and some anti-sexism material. (The most interesting of the latter are the interviews with women members of the military, who say that they were subtly and not so subtly given the message that their primary function in being allowed on military bases in the first place was to service the soldiers' sexual needs, with birth control and abortions made available, no questions asked.)

The anti-war folks in the movie are never critical of soldiers, and to the contrary present their activities as a means of giving voice to the very large contingent of soldiers who had themselves turned against the war. Most of the material in the shows, it is said, was adapted from material written by dissenting GIs in underground newspapers and such.

The shows themselves range from folk songs and poems with clear political messages, to political statements and readings, to vaudeville-style skits and comic songs with subversive content. Actually a lot of the latter are quite tame, and wouldn't look out of place in a standard USO show. (Making fun of officers for the benefit of the grunts in the audience, for example.)

I agree with the bulk of the politics, but certainly not all. Probably the main thing that makes me uneasy is that in (rightly) condemning much of what the U.S. government and multinational corporations and such do to make the world a worse place, there is a tendency to overlook just how rotten other folks are as well, or would be if they had more power. There's this implication that if only the U.S. would get out of the way, the people in Vietnam and Okinawa and Korea and the Philippines, etc., etc. would establish peaceful regimes serving the interests of their people. When in fact everything about history and human nature tells me either some other external power would take over the role of oppressor, or they'd end up with a highly flawed system of their own that could easily cause as much or more total misery as they're suffering through with a meddlesome U.S.

Especially when you're talking about violent revolution, and violent military self-defense against imperialism (and in the movie they by no means advocate that active resistance be limited to nonviolent methods), even if the current bad guys are ousted or blocked, any resulting power vacuum is likely to be filled by, well, the sorts of people who are sufficiently unscrupulous and skilled in the use of violence and deception to win wars and revolutions.

Such people can pretty much be guaranteed not to implement anything remotely like a just system. It could be anywhere from marginally better to vastly worse than the system these folks are (again, rightly) so critical of, but it's not going to be anything very appealing.

I remain impressed, though, by people who are willing to speak out on issues like this, regardless of how much hatred and vilification it'll bring down on their heads. I don't know that it's going to change many minds of people who aren't already inclined in the same direction, but I think it's vital for supporting those who are in some sense on the same side, for letting them know they're not alone. The GIs who deserted because their consciences wouldn't allow them to do otherwise, the draftees who are languishing in prison because they said no, they should know that there are people who admire and support them and have not forgotten them.

And yeah, it's to the credit of the U.S. that people can say the things the folks in this movie are saying and get away with it. The consequences of dissent are less severe here than in the vast majority of past and present societies. (Which is not to say that people in the U.S. don't suffer unjustly for taking a stand against their country's wars and other evils. I'm making a comparative, not an absolute point.) They're pretty much openly rooting for the U.S. to lose when it undertakes unjust imperialist, genocidal wars. Whether that's justified or not, I would think there are very few countries you could do that and remain alive and out of prison.

There aren't many issues more emotional for some people than when others oppose governmental policy during wartime. It is a truism for many if not most people that you can argue all you want before a war, but once your country is at war, you support the war effort, or at least shut up. (In point of fact, many such people are just as venomous toward anyone criticizing militarism and right wing foreign policy even before and between the actual wars themselves, but never mind.)

I don't buy it, of course. I wish the "Vietnam Syndrome" that supposedly makes it harder to start wars was enormously stronger. I think countries should have to take into account in their planning that going to war in and of itself will not automatically bring your whole populace on board, that you may well have millions of people refusing to cooperate--deserting from the military, defying the draft, denouncing the war in the press, whatever.

Very, very few people are absolute pacifists, so it's not like you could never engage in any war if people were in the habit of thinking for themselves and only supporting the wars they agree with. It wouldn't be much, if at all, harder, for instance, to generate sufficient cooperation to fight a defensive war when your country has been unjustly invaded. But what it would cut down on are wars of dubious merit that you're not able to sell to your citizens. And that's all to the good.

So to hell with the idea that once a war starts, you have to support it or you're stabbing our boys in the field in the back. I'd rather support our boys (and girls) who say no, like the GIs interviewed in this movie.

Sutherland reads a statement at the end of this film that nicely epitomizes the film as a whole. It's a call to workers and common people to say no to war, no to oppression, and to turn the guns on those who would have them fight unjust wars and maintain unjust systems. It's a powerful, emotional statement that I can get behind maybe 75%. As a Gandhian, I balk at the part about using guns and violence to throw off the oppressors.

I react to that statement pretty much the way I react to the version of the Left represented in the whole movie. I'm certainly more on their side than on the side of those they're criticizing and fighting, but by no means am I with them entirely.

I recommend seeing this movie, as it raises a lot of issues worth contemplating, including issues that would make a lot of people squirm even if they consider themselves liberal, or opposed to, say, the current Iraq war.